Asymmetric shocks are common in markets; securities' payoffs are not normally distributed and exhibit skewness. This paper studies the portfolio holdings of heterogeneous agents with preferences over mean, variance and skewness, and derives equilibrium prices. A three funds separation theorem...

I investigate a pricing kernel in which coskewness and the market volatility risk factors are endogenously determined. I show that the price of coskewness and market volatility risk are restricted by investor risk aversion and skewness preference. The risk aversion is estimated to be between two...

The authors extend the well-known Hansen and Jagannathan (HJ) volatility bound. HJ characterize the lower bound on the volatility of any admissible stochastic discount factor (SDF) that prices correctly a set of primitive asset returns. The authors characterize this lower bound for any...

The author develops a strategy for utilizing higher moments and conditioning information efficiently, and hence improves on the variance bounds computed by Hansen and Jagannathan (1991, the HJ bound) and Gallant, Hansen, and Tauchen (1990, the GHT bound). The author's bound incorporates variance...

We develop a strategy for utilizing higher moments, variance risk premia, and conditioning information efficiently, and hence improve on the variance bounds computed by Hansen and Jagannathan (1991); Gallant, Hansen, and Tauchen (1990); and Bekaert and Liu (2004). Our bounds reach existing...

In this paper, we develop lower bounds on the variance of the permanent component and the transitory component, and on the variance of the ratio of the permanent to the transitory components of SDFs. Exactly solved eigenfunction problems are then used to study the empirical attributes of asset...

In this paper, I show that the variance of Fama-French factors, the variance of the momentum factor, as well as the correlation between these factors, predict an important fraction of the time- series variation in post-1990 aggregate stock market returns. This predictability is particularly...

When the transitory component of the stochastic discount factors (SDFs) prices the long-term bond, and the permanent component prices other assets, we develop lower bounds on the variance of the permanent component and the transitory component, and on the variance of the ratio of the permanent...

I use Stochastic Discount Factors to examine the sources of the idiosyncratic volatility premium. I find that non-zero risk aversion and firms' non-systematic coskewness determine the premium on idiosyncratic volatility risk. The firm's non-systematic coskewness measures the comovement of the...